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Thanks to OLPC, we have soon 50 million netbooks in rich countries. Intel and Microsoft’s profit margins per laptop are shrinking rapidly.

Thanks to OLPC, children have soon millions of cheap lower power laptops in poor countries.

Thanks to OLPC, the PC/Laptop industry’s interpretation of Moore’s law has totally been reshaped, every 18month now PC/laptops will be half the price instead of 2x more powerful and with 2x more bloatware.

Sure, I would have been happier, and so would most other Linux geeks if OLPC had shipped 100 million laptops to poor children by now, and not just 1 million units. Reason for that not happening yet in multi-hundred million scales though are several:

1. Intel will do anything it can not to be killed off by a non-profit laptop technology revolution. Including abusing of monopolistic situations and corrupting politicians.

2. AMD is not much interested in helping OLPC succeed in lowering the cost of laptops and PCs. Lower cost also means less profits and margins for AMD, and AMD has enough problems with profits and margins as it is.

Looking forward, to reach those 100 million poor children sooner rather than later:

1. OLPC needs to find an alternative to AMD as soon as possible. VIA is planned for XO-1.5 which could hopefully ship a few millions of units in a few months time, if VIA supports this move of OLPC creating a cheaper and lower power market using their processor. XO-1.5 could reach the $150 pricepoint soon and enable dozens of commercial netbooks using the VIA processor and also copying on the way OLPC is using the VIA processor.

2. OLPC needs to implement the worlds best ARM processor based laptops for XO-2 working with Google to implement the so called Chrome OS on those. Cloud computing can work also for places without stable internet access, HTML5 supports offline web apps and offline databases. OLPC needs to push Google to make it work on WiFi Mesh networks as well. XO-2 can start at $100 when released and reach the $50 price point, when manufactured using any of half a dozen ARM processor companies chips. All of TI, Qualcomm, Marvell, Freescale, Nvidia and Samsung, all those ARM processors should fit in the XO-2 design. Competition will bring the prices down faster.

Also, to reach those 100 million children, OLPC needs to have more than just a couple dozen engineers working on the whole optimizations of hardware and software for the project.

What OLPC managed to build in XO1 and XO-1.5 with 30 employees and the little budget that they could get is absolutely amazing.

But what OLPC probably needs for XO-2 to absolutely work and sell laptops soon at $50 to revolutionize education worldwide, is thousands of engineers and the support from Barack Obama and the European Union.

So OLPC’s political agenda definitely needs to be more targeted towards the politics of education and aid of the USA and Europe and with much more ambition to make things happen in huge scale as quickly as possible.

The main goal of the OLPC, and thus, of the whole computer industry at this point, is to lower the cost of laptops by lowering the power consumption. The best way to achieve that, is to limit the way applications get full native access to the deep internals of the computer system. Intel’s X86 standard and Microsoft’s Windows OS were designed only for that multi-purpose backwards compatibility where the same unoptimized bloated software would work across thousands of hardware configurations with often full root access to the deepest internals of a computer system. For most of the applications that most people need, you do not need full native code support in third party applications. By limiting full native access for third party applications, you take care in one swoop of all the security problems that one has on Intel and Microsoft based PC and laptops. You basically make spyware, viruses, hacking and all of those problems impossible by design.

That is how Android is made. Android provides a totally sandboxed JAVA-based software layer, which only interacts with the hardware features through totally controllable software-to-hardware APIs. With Android on ARM, you have a complete shift in the way third party applications are run compared to X86 Windows XP/7, MacOSX and even most of those X86 Desktop Linux distributions that have been going around, including Ubuntu and Fedora.

The open source native Android Linux code hacking happens exclusively at the manufacturer stage. Which means, you want to have a manufacturer in control of everything, you want the manufacturer to customize Android for the very specific mass produced hardware in question, providing all the standard and non-standard software-to-hardware APIs for third party software developers to gain access to the all of the devices standard or special hardware features.

What you have backing Android is the worlds absolute best company in Google, comprised of the worlds largest concentration of PHDs and Engineers with the most experience in Web and computer technology. The role of Google with Android is to make sure that the native Android code works in the most optimal fashion with the most optimal hardware configurations that manufacturers are making for it. Google helps manufacturers prepare that Android native code customization for each different System On Chip, for each different variation on the ARM Cortex processor profiles by each of the industry leading ARM processor manufacturers among Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Freescale, Samsung, Nvidia, Marvell and others.

If you want to change the default Android user interface layer and make it look more like the Sugar User Interface layer (which for XO-1 was built on top of an optimized X86 Fedora Linux installation), you definitely can do those changes and customizations. Those would come from the manufacturers, thus in the case of OLPC from the whole OLPC organization, in cooperation with Google or anyone else helping to create a more education-laptop friendly user interface. But Android applications remain the same, and appart from slight porting that can be required, all Android applications are designed to work in full screen mode, and management of multi-tasking, notifications, memory and processing power consumption, all those are managed the same way accros all implementations of the Android OS.

HP has just announced that they are working to support Android in future HP Laptops. Asus has announced to be working on Android laptops. Look forward to Android ruling over all ARM Laptop implementations, at least for these where the lowest cost and the lowest power consumption levels have been achieved. Look forward to $100 Android ARM laptops. Look forward to the empire of Intel and Microsoft crumbling under the inevitable hardware and software revolution that comes with the XO-2 and with the whole industry’s shift to lower cost, lower power consumption using ARM and Android in all laptops.

The idea of a big calculator type of product using a cheap and simple embedded ARM processor, something like a 6″ 480×360 monochrome display (perhaps even smaller) and WiFi perhaps even some built-in way to use a SIM card slot for subsidized cellular data access, that type of super cheap Laptop project could be fine for reading ebooks, writing documents and searching for text based stuff on the Internet. That type of cheap monochrome screen and cheap embedded processor could display very basic HTML text-only pages from the Internet. And I could imagine that a whole mobile-web type of alternate Internet could be made that would suit to be viewed on this type of super cheap embedded laptop. Google or some other online service can even process the whole web other than AJAC and Flash content to reformat it to be displayed on such a supposed low resolution monochrome display.

Imagine basically a display that could be some type of mobile phone like monochrome LCD display but large enough to be usable in a Laptop form factor. And with enough resolution to be used for ebooks, writing documents and surfing a basic type of web.

Though, even though about 500 blogs around the Internet according to Google Blog Search had been announcing this as an OLPC alternative, I’d rather call it a complete redifinition of the PC/Laptop industry. They all talked about a February 3rd release event happening somewhere in India. Though that date has no passed and there are no pictures to be found on the Internet. No detailed specifications, no real concrete proof that this project exists. So far, this Indian project is vapourware.

Although I agree with the principal that we need to build it cheaper than the XO-1, it needs to be based on cheaper embedded processors, it needs to use the cheapest displays that we can get. Even if those displays are low resolution and monochrome. Color displays, the next PIxel Qi and all that is fascinating and we all cannot wait for the XO-2 touchscreens. Though until Pixel Qi launches their first commercial screens hopefully within a few months, until then, then why not use cheap monochrome ones if somehow they can be made to display the kind of text that is needed.

OLPC is probably looking for a non X86 architecture for XO-2, probably ARM, where several providers can provide the processor. Using ARM Cortex, OLPC can use any of Texas Instruments, Mavell, Freescale, Samsung, Qualcomm, Nvidia and others, all interchangeably, independently of the deals that will be put in place. The idea being that having all these ARM Cortex providers being more or less compatible with each other, enabling minimal changes in motherboard designs to have them all be compatible, this enables competition in the processor market. This will more quickly drive the prices down much further. This is the only way you can optimize the interpretation of Moore’s law which says that you can cut the price and power consumption of laptops by half every 18 months.

There is a basic reason AMD is not too enthusiastic about this whole new low cost laptop market. The reason is written on the wall, everyones can see it coming, cheaper laptops means it will be much harder to find profits in the industry. AMD isn’t exactly having an easy time already as things are today, Intel’s profit margins and overall income have shrinked 90% in 2008 compared to 2007.

I believe OLPC should use Google Android with Sugar on top, and they should increasingly rely on cloud computing such as the recently rumored Google Web Drive service to store and share all the data on. With XO-2, you should much further synchronize the way the school servers synch storage, processing power and contents to and from the cloud. Basically what you get is an overly simplified Internet access terminal, one with a small ARM Cortex processor behind the next generation of even lower power and lower cost Pixel Qi screens. One that just relies on basic Google Gears for local content caching, and let most of the rest happen using the much cheaper cloud.

$100 laptops using ARM are possible today already. Chinese GPS manufacturers are making them already using uber simple Linux and last generation MIPS or ARM processors:http://techvideoblog.com/category/laptops/

This makes it obvious that OLPC can achieve a $75 price point on XO-2, consider also the advantage of using a dual touch-screen, is that ou can even more easilly mass manufacture exactly the same model for the whole world. Since all the different keyboard layouts and all of the local interfaces are simply going to be a software function of the touchscreens. Mary-Lou Jepsen has done it once already. She can do it again.

Sugar has been spun off of the main OLPC branch anyways starting months ago. So I guess it should be kind of natural, especially during this financial and lending crisis, that the main OLPC branch shouldn’t be the one carrying all the software load in terms of paying for further Sugar development. With the latest Sugar release for the OLPC version 8.2.0, Sugar for OLPC is now stable.

Sugar Labs as I understand it is now tied closer with Red Hat’s Fedora project, and it’s being made for more platforms such as to run on those netbooks and other devices.

OLPC needs to focus on content, on educational strategies, to develop pedagogical guidelines to present to teachers as recommendations for how to successfully implement OLPC, how to use computers and the Internet in education. Taking into account all the different environments, some places that don’t have a lot of Internet, some places that don’t have good electricity, some places where kids have more or less troubles to educate themselves.

OLPC needs to continue revolutionizing the computer industry. That is why XO-2 is very important. Lowering the amount of components in the laptop should be a priority. Focus should be put on engineering and firmware programming, making of drivers for the next hardware.

You can’t just sit back and wait for Intel to make the $100 laptop. Intel’s current stragtegy is only to pull up the pricing of the average netbook with all kinds of whistles that they are introducing with the approval of the new Atom Z processor. Such features as the Intel Classmate tablet, Sony Vaio P, MSI hybrid netbook, Vista.. all those things are very carefully designed by Intel to inflate the price of the average netbook sold. Intel and the rest of the established computer industry are loosing huge profit margins on having to provide netbooks instead of the previous years mid-range laptops that had dual-core, high power consumption graphics and all kinds of gimmicks that could push up pricing. Thanks to OLPC, the laptop industry’s profit margins are quickly going away.

OLPC needs to pull the pricing further down and as quickly as possible. I believe that AMD has pretty much conceded that they are not very much interested in lower laptop prices. AMD netbooks are higher priced. AMD doesn’t seem to come with the next more optimized lower cost and lower power successor to the AMD Geode LX900.

OLPC needs to look for a cheaper, simpler and lower power architechture. I believe that one can only be ARM Cortex A8 or A9 depending on the planned timing of initial large scale hardware deployments of XO-2 model. There are a whole range of companies now making those ARM Cortex A8 processors. Marvell for one has probably already proposed such solutions to OLPC, Texas Instruments has a good one, Qualcomm and Freescale are demonstrating such prototypes at CES right now. Laptops to be sold commercially with profit at $199, thus could probably be built by a non-profit at half that price when all components are optimized, when the screen is the latest Pixel Qi, when a deal for mass production is signed.

Software for XO-2 could be optimized and tweaked best by Google, IBM or some other companies like that who contribute to embedded Linux projects. Using Google Android I think would be the perfect solution. Google wants more Internet access to more people in developing countries. If Google themselves don’t soon release the reference design for the $100 XO-2 Google Android laptop, then OLPC should do it as a priority. Using Android as the platform for XO-2, this way you know you get the best possible software optimizations by the worlds definite best software company.

Killing Intel and Microsoft off in the process would just be a very welcomed bonus.

This JL700 laptop is from some unknown Hong Kong company, but it does prove that $100 ARM based laptops are coming.

But this is certainly the type of laptop that is the laptop of the future.

Archos could make this using their nearly unaltered DaVinci platform and simply cramming it into a laptop form factor with a keyboard and trackpad mouse and a normal cheaer non-touch LCD. Archos could sell it below $200 and try to provide Google Android on it as an open platform, while they develop Google Android for the rest of the Archos line of products.

ARM based laptops cost less then half the cost of X86 based laptops, they consume less then half the power, take up less then half the size and weight.

I am sure we are going to see ARM based laptops very soon based on all kinds of ARM chips be it Texas Instruments DaVinci, Marvell Scale, Samsung, Qualcomm, Nvidia and others. Those are all going to be half or a third of the cost of any X86 based laptop, they are going to consume lower then half the battery power, they are going to fit in half the size and weight, they are going to be much faster at booting up and at doing basic tasks compared to X86.

More about this $100 ARM based laptop at:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/27/keepin-it-real-fake-part-cxxvi-jointechs-99-jl7100-rips-eee/

http://www.jointech.com.hk/jl7100.html

Of course, this means the end for Intel, Microsoft and potentially the end of several large PC and laptop makers such as Dell, HP, Apple, Fujitsu, Asus, Acer, MSI, Foxconn and others, all of which see no profit in selling laptops at $99: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/technology/21pc.html

OLPC has succeeded in forcing Microsoft to lower the licencing price of Windows XP to $3, OLPC has succeeded in forcing Microsoft to slim down the hardware, storage requirements of running Windows XP, OLPC has succeeded in getting the whole laptop industry to start building what they call XO competitors out of their desperation of the prospect of loosing all of their profit margins, OLPC has succeeded in forcing Intel to speed up the release of the Atom Centrino processor to compete with AMD Geode as a low power fanless CPU.

Hey, what’s wrong with Microsoft continuing to invest multi-billions of dollars to push and promote their Windows XP alternative to Sugar Linux, why is that bad? At the end Microsoft will be forced to provide an open source version of Windows XP or perhaps Microsoft will even be forced to develop software based on Linux and the goal of OLPC will be completely reached.

I know OLPC is not a laptop project but it is. I’d like to see the XO in a commercial version sold in my local supermarket within the next few months for $200 each. OLPC needs to commercialize the product in partnership with whomever brands and distributors who would like to take care of the commercial mass market distribution. This way, the whole industry will have to speed up even faster and reach the result of the $100 laptop that works for 24h on a battery in sunlight and connects to broadband wireless internet for free everywhere.

Truth is Intel makes huge profits the way the industry works today and does not want things to change. Intel management feel that their established business model domination is extremely threatened by a small open-source hardware and software project like the OLPC project.

Fact is Intel does not have a processor that consumes as little power and costs as little as the AMD Geode processor.

Fact is Intel does not want the market to embrace $200 laptops. Intel would loose all sales of Dual Core High-K metal gate quadro core processors if most new laptops only will have 400mhz fanless ultra low voltage, since most people in fact don’t need more processing power to browse the Internet and access all their unbloated Web Apps and other most basic apps on the laptop.

Fact is Intel wants the business model of big margins on expensive hardware to continue to be the defacto mainstream standard for when people need to upgrade their computers. Fact is Intel is not present in any of the low cost new solutions coming out such as the VIA based $199 Shuttle and Zonbu desktop computers or the $150 OLPC laptop.

Fact is the Intel Classmate brings absolutely nothing to improve education nor improve battery life or lower the cost of laptops. The Classmate is designed to fail. Intel does not want to mass produce cheap laptops. Classmate has 5 times shorter battery life, double or triple the manufacturing price.

Given all these facts, I believe Nicholas Negroponte has been really polite not to tell more of the disgusting ways Intel’s salespeople in Nigeria, Mongolia, Peru, Mexico, Pakistan, India, Libya and so many other countries have been doing non other than telling blatant lies to trash the OLPC project and that Intel has given those sales people all means to attack the OLPC effort in any way possible. Threatening to remove existing investment projects such as the ones mentionned by Paul Otellini was most probably one of the dirty tactics used (just look at the facts, how much Intel say the plan to invest and have invested in Indian and Pakistani ICT, presents given to Nigerian ICT, personal level friendships and promise of free teacher training in Microsoft Excell spreadsheet software in cooperation with Mexicos presidents. Intel has been using all of its connections to undermine the OLPC project.

2 days before Intel CEO Paul Otellini would unveil the Classmate 2 or the Intel-powered XO at the CES, Intel announced that they are quitting the OLPC board.

Intel claims that they are quitting because of Nicholas Negroponte wanting them to stop the promotion of the Classmate/Eee to education in third world countries, but I think that the real reason is that Intel does not have a good enough processor for the OLPC project to use as an alternative to the AMD Geode LX-700. Intel has not been able to develop a processor to match the price, power consumption and performance requirements of the OLPC project. Paul Otellini could have looked like a fool at the CES if he had to unveil an Intel powered XO that was performing worse in terms of price and power consumption compared to the AMD powered one.

Intel executives probably have seen the OLPC project more as a threat than as an opportunity to their core business from day one. Intel probably wants to do whatever they can to stop the development of cheap laptop alternatives using cheaper fanless AMD processors and even ARM based processors in the future (XO-2, XO-3…), which is a direct threat to Intel’s market-dominating X86 standard.

I think that Intel did not achieve or want to achieve any of these technological and pricing advancements in an Intel-powered XO and thus in fear of being ridiculed at CES with a more expensive Intel-powered XO with shorter battery life, Intel, as a last resort, decided to quit OLPC and blame it on Nicholas Negroponte.

Intel might think it is a superior technology provider and that it can simply continue to market its Intel powered education laptop against the OLPC project. Intel probably feels too unconfortable with the prospect of supporting the development of cheap low powered laptops by being a member of the OLPC board. I think that Intel sees those cheap XO laptops as potentially becoming huge devastating disruptors to the established expensive laptop business in the developped nations. A commercial XO could replace all laptops in the business productivity, educational, personal and entertainment sectors of the PC and laptop business, which is the reason Mary-Lou Jepsen, OLPC’s previous CTO, is working on her new business to commercialise XO technology in the coming weeks and months.

When will we hear of the first commercial cheap laptop projects using many or most of the OLPC XO open-source technologies? Quanta’s ex-CEO talked about Quanta producing a commercial version of the XO many months ago. I think that any company with an interest in indroducing low margin, large volume, low cost, low power laptops, could most probably come in, approach Mary-Lou Jepsen and the OLPC for access to using the open-source hardware and software of the project for commercial projects. And this could lead any of WalMart, Dell, Medion-Aldi, Google, AMD, Amazon and IBM to introduce commercial $200 laptops in the near future, all running optimized and free versions of Linux.

Would the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation not be criticised for working against the work of the Red Cross to bringing vaccinations and food to starving and sick populations? Why would anyone want to compete with a non-profit open-source project like OLPC? I have been asking those questions to Intel ever since I filmed an Intel representative at the WCIT in May of 2006 when they first introduced the Classmate PC.

If anyone has a better technology to decrease the price, improve the battery life, improve the e-book screen readabillity, improve the flash/divx video playback performance or improve the connectivity with WiMax, cellular, satellite or other technologies, then logically that entity currently simply can contribute that new technology into the open-source development for the XO-2 by simply contacting OLPC, posting on their Wiki, making press announcements and talking about their newer, better technologies to bloggers and to the media. I think that Intel doesn’t want to share it’s R&D, distribution network, design ideas and proprietary technologies with a non-profit like OLPC. I think that Intel hates the open-source hardware/software/distribution revolution.

Intel’s agreement with the OLPC Foundation included a “non disparagement” clause, under which Intel and One Laptop promised not to criticize each other, according to Nicholas Negroponte in the latest article in the Wall Street Journal.

Still Intel tactics has violated that repeatedly to kill OLPC efforts in Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan, India, China and Intel is also still trying to pull those tactics in Mexico, Brazil.

This is simply disgracefull of Intel, scandalous. But Negroponte has signed an agreement saying that he is not allowed to criticize Intel, so he is not allowed to talk about these shameless tactics even though Intel is the one violating the agreement. So only independant voices on the Internet can get those messages of truth out about Intels tactics.

In Nigeria, Intel came and donated 3000 laptops to counter OLPC efforts, then sells 17 thousand Classmates to Nigeria at a loss. Then Microsoft corrupted Nigerian officials with 400 thousand dollars to install Windows XP on those instead of Mandriva Linux.

Anyways, the next step will be that Intel is investing hundreds of millions to develop the Diamondville x86 processor that is the Intel version of a fanless, low cost, low power processor, and alternative to the AMD Geode.

So the next step is there will have to be an Intel powered XO laptop ready for mass production. Otherwise it simply seems Intel will not allow OLPC to start the mass production. So possibly some deal will be done between OLPC, Intel and AMD, so that 50% be built with AMD processors and 50% with Intel processors. Hopefully Intel executives will let it mass produce and mass distribute with that sort of agreement.

Thankfully CMO, Quanta, AMD and all other involved have accepted to delay the up ramping of mass production, they are complying to Intel’s shameless behavior of delaying the OLPC project, since only 300 thousand AMD powered OLPC XO laptops are being produced in the first few months in Quanta’s factories. But at any time in the beginning of next year, mass production could reach a volume of over a million laptops per month.

The question is will Intel allow OLPC to start ramping up mass production to its maximum production capacity of exclusively the AMD powered version even though the Intel Diamondville integration might not be completely ready before the middle to second half of next year? Will Intel agree to stop selling its inferior and more expensive ULV powered Classmate PC? Will Intel tell Asus to stop marketing the current ULV powered version of the Asus Eee as an OLPC competitor?